


Lily of the Valley

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Flora & Fauna, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, F/F, Gen with Romance Elements, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Invasion of Privacy, Multiple Viewpoint Characters, Night Terrors, Non-Linear Narrative, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Team as Family, War Trauma, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 03:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Acxa mentioned once that Narti's voice takes a different shape depending on the space it occupies. Ezor compared it to the breeze that once passed through the now-razed trees in her father's planet, arriving only four times a decaphoebe: a scent she never experienced but still longed to chase; a sentence without words that you somehow still understood.(A eulogy told partly in dream sequences)





	Lily of the Valley

Zethrid wakes to a view of the sky, a solid expanse of blue patched by white flecks. Most territories they frequent wear a tattered shroud of purple-gray or blood (or purple-gray and blood), so she gathers that she is dreaming. A flowery smell perfumes the air when she balls grass against her fingers; growing more fragrant the tighter she grasps. She bolts upright to a rigid sitting position and brings a fistful of it to her face.

Little pink blooms hang downward from hooked stems. Odd, how something so small can produce such a scent. Those that escaped crumpling resemble tiny bells no larger than a fingernail, clusters and clusters of them stretching endlessly against the pale horizon.

"I guess since you guys can't ring like metal bells, you need another way to make noise," She says with an uneasy laugh. The bulk of her dreams have easy categorizations: smog, combat, or death (or a combination of smog, combat, and death). More recently; a kiss on the mouth, though Narti still fits in the final category and can be (mostly) filed to minimize outbursts in the waking plane.

"Smell isn't sound, Zethrid," she chides herself in Lotor's filigreed accent, posture straightening as she paces towards the light. "I swear that isn't how he _actually_ talks. Nobody else I've met talks like that."

 _Nobody alive, mostly,_ responded the sound, or smell, or whatever Narti's voice feels like when it echoes in her head.

Acxa mentioned once that Narti's voice takes a different shape depending on the space it occupies. Ezor compared it to the breeze that used to pass through the now-razed trees of her father's planet, arriving only four times a decaphoebe: a scent she never experienced but still longed to chase; a sentence without words that you somehow still understood.

Zethrid freezes mid step and clenches her fists even tighter, faced with the absence of anything else to hold on to. The perfume waters her eyes and she shuts them immediately.

"Narti... do I file this in death _and_ combat?" she asks pitifully, the growing collection of sealed treasure boxes piling like unwanted gifts in a corner.

 

* * *

 

Ezor returns from a shopping trip with what appears to be oversized flowers encrusted in tiny crystals. She calls the generals for an impromptu meeting in the kitchen, clasping her hands in giddy excitement. Acxa leers at the blooms with caution. They span wide as a palm with uniformly layered white petals; yellow pistils decorating the center.

Zethrid sits by the stool closest to Narti, and takes her hand under the counter. Kova, with a twitching nose, points in the direction of the tubular piping that feeds food goo from a vat. Her eyes follow silently, watching as dark surfaces peel away to tree trunks that pry open the kitchen ceiling. Flickering light showers through cracks of a green canopy, and on the branches grow the same white flowers, albeit slightly smaller than an average palm and not covered in glittering pinpricks.

Ezor remains in the same spot as she had been, except clothed in formless swaths of brown and hunched much smaller than she normally stands. The smell of burning wood irritates Zethrid's nose; she grits her teeth at the familiar flood of purple gray blotting out the sky, free hand clenching at her knee.

Narti kisses her knuckles and they are back in the kitchen. Ezor has laid out the flowers on their fanciest plates.

"You eat them," she says with a grin. "I don't exactly know what they taste like, but I read good reviews."

"I bet it tastes like your intestines being torn apart," Acxa replies, leer devolving to a frown.

"They definitely do _not_! They're supposed to be sweet with some tart. These guys use a different recipe than my Gran, but I heard these are better than the ones at the mall."

She's not normally this upset over food. Zethrid bites her lower lip. "I'll try one. The ones at the snack stands are pretty good."

"They're fresh garbage." Ezor's teeth force a grin that fails to reach her eyes. She plucks a petal and holds it by Zethrid's mouth. "These are made closer how you're supposed to make them."

"There's a wrong way to make them?" Zethrid starts, but Narti has already shoveled in three pieces without hesitation, so she may as well follow suit. The crystal coating dissolves in a strange meld of sour and sweet, and the petal it leaves behind goes down with a pleasant tingle, like the soft fuzz before wakefulness that beckons you back to sleep.

"Two out of four," Ezor boasts, consuming an entire flower by herself. "Well, three, but my vote isn't supposed to count because I'm biased. Gran's was sweeter, but the tart sort of tastes like the berries that grew by the mountains..."

She trails off. Acxa cups her cheek in silent apology and pops one past her lips.

"Four out of four," she whispers into Ezor's neck.

Zethrid grasps at her throat, the passage constricting. Narti swiftly leads her out of the kitchen and into the hall before the two notice anything is amiss, thank the stars. ("Jeez, you guys are so eager." "The flower does that sometimes depending on the person!") They rush to the healing pods; Zethrid all but chucks herself inside.

 

> _You should tell her you got an allergic reaction._
> 
> **_But she was so happy. I didn't want to ruin it. How long does this take to fix up?_ **
> 
> _16 dobashes._

Zethrid pictures Galra metal scraping at the trees; if Narti has collected that snapshot of time, it means it was willingly offered. She wants to know why Ezor still chases the breeze when her planet is long dead; she wants-

 

> **_-Mind causing a distraction?_ **
> 
> _No need. They're smooching in the common area._
> 
> **_That ties up neatly. Where's Lotor been?_ **
> 
> _He's out trading for Balmera crystal fragments with a basal cleavage pattern._
> 
> **_I-is that a euphemism?_ **
> 
> _He wants to assemble a musical instrument similar to what his uncle played._
> 
> **_Lotor has an UNCLE?_ **
> 
> _Not blood uncle, though it's practice in the dead dialect he speaks in his head for close friends of the family to be called familial names. Sister, uncle, cousin. Also, had._
> 
> **_Oh. Well, dude must have treated him nicer than Zarkon if he's going that far._ **  

Narti responds with the foggy sound of musical bells. Zethrid strains against the memory, like wiping layers of grime from a dusty mirror. The melody is foreign and yet familiar, rising gradually from a muted hum to a roar that shrieks at her for trespassing inside it. Her companion remains unmoving against the battering tide, but Zethrid swears her legs are trembling to find purchase in the immobile safety of a healing pod.

 

> **_I... I can't see._ **

She imagines cutting through the fog like a kitchen knife through softened cream (or a body, or two, or ten in the arena in between jeers about her ears, her mouth-)

Warm, dark hands tap against what seems to be an ancient keypad. It is made entirely of crystals slightly wider and longer than her fingers, arranged in single file. She hears the sound of gentle laughter, and then sobbing. Zethrid's breath hitches. The melody is an avalanche knocking at her skull from the inside.

 

> _He asked me to guard this for safe keeping._

At least a varga's worth of questions form in her mind, but questions are detrimental in Zarkon's reign, so Zethrid keeps them to herself. The pod doors slide with a hiss. She taps her foot nervously at the ground, then drapes her arms around Narti's waist. Kova snakes between their boots and idly purrs.

"You want lunch?"

Lunch is neutral enough. They can laugh about standard issue Galran rations boring them to tears and cook meals from dying or deceased civilizations (usually half of their own). Sometimes Lotor dumps a deadpan joke about how bland meals are why soldiers all want death (or victory, whatever comes first). Acxa would do the funny thing her brows do when things don't align with protocol, Ezor would point out how great her brows look-

 

> _Smog. Combat. Death._
> 
> **_...Narti?_ **

 

* * *

 

[ ] SMOG [ ] COMBAT [ ] DEATH

[x] SMOG [x] COMBAT [x] DEATH

 

* * *

 

Lotor wakes to a hazy view of cylindrical glass panels. He rubs his eyes, sits upright, and scratches the back of his head. The scrape of gloved nails fail to register, so he gathers that he is dreaming. This test is more time efficient than the one he scrapped, which involved first looking at his palms, flexing them, and _then_ performing a sensory check. Considering the standard pattern of these night terrors, the ticks saved make little difference, but any advantage is better than none.

Pale pink petals scatter and land on the bed and floor of the healing pod turned holding cell. He cranes his head to find the ceiling notably absent, like a lid popped off a food container. The sky is a wine dark curtain torn apart by weeping gray branches; strange little flowers littering both inside and outside, as far as the eye can see.

 _Branches don't weep, Lotor,_ he scolds himself. Best to save speaking for words with notable significance.

Thick smog blurs the horizon. Lotor squints, and debates fighting whoever has come to gore him. Some nights it is easier not to expend energy; dreams allow the luxury of weakness not afforded in day. In the dusty light, a cloaked figure closes the distance, humming something resembling a melody that happens to be impossible to hum.

"Narti." 

(Oh thank goodness. He can't say she hasn't earned the right to, anyway.)

Acxa mentioned once that Narti's voice takes distinctly nonvocal shapes; more texture than sound. Ezor compared it to a natural phenomena in her ravaged home planet; a thermal venting that arrived four times a century like clockwork. Her father's people would glide through the plains for 8 quintents without the need to build momentum. She could not describe the smell because soldiers razed the planet before she turned 13, a few lunar cycles away from her first Breeze. She couldn't fly either. The contaminant of Galra blood is prone to taking all you have but the desire to die-

 _Or victory. Whatever comes first,_ Narti says gently, pressing a hand against the glass.

The shape her voice takes is what he imagines his mother sounds like while singing a lullaby, to the tune of a degraded recording of King Alfor playing a Balmera crystal lamellophone. He hesitates to call it beautiful, though admittedly, Ezor's description fits. He's never heard his mother sing and the thought of a voice mimicking a sound he's never heard is more terrifying than being torn open.

"I'm sorry," he starts, but clips it short. Some nights are best spent expending minimum energy.

Narti scratches a nail against the glass; it disintegrates into a fine spray of glowing bugs. She holds a utility blade that Zethrid often uses to cut fruit, and seats herself at the nearest bed corner. Lotor quashes all remaining urges to run and rests beside her. Running only delays and often exacerbates the main event.

_You could have told them all the underhanded ways she pursues you, or why this came to pass._

(Alfor's playing always reminded him of lingering regret. Why would a leader who accomplished so much have anything to regret? Zarkon on the other hand-) 

She presses his head against her shoulder and holds it there. He slacks in her grip. This part is not entirely new; in the earlier days he'd take up her offer for uneventful sleep. The threat of potential memory leaks immediately curbed this practice, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't miss it.

"Vulnerability is an undesirable trait in a leader," he mumbles like rote, while she hacks off strips of his hair.

 _Vulnerability is a desirable trait in a friend,_ Narti answers, pressing the knife against his neck while squeezing his hand. He offers no resistance.

 

* * *

 

[ ] SMOG [ ] COMBAT [ ] DEATH

[x] SMOG [ ] COMBAT [x] DEATH [x] worth seeing her again even if she'll always kill me afterwards

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> -The bell shaped flower in the first scene is the uncommon pink variant of [lily of the valley.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_of_the_valley)  
> -The unnamed flower from Ezor's home planet is shaped like the [Nelumbo genus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelumbo) of lotus.  
> -The Balmera Lamellophone is based visually off this [particular array mbira.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3b1bz_9gEo)


End file.
